


The Scars That Remain Don't Define Us

by Scrawlers



Series: Conversations With the Devil [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 20:37:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17029611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: Jounouchi finds himself looking at an old cigarette burn scar one day after Hirutani has his chat with Yuugi.





	The Scars That Remain Don't Define Us

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a little while ago, but in light of Tumblr being . . . Tumblr, I've decided to archive everything here, just in case.
> 
> That aside, this fic also references the events of another fic of mine, _Bound to Leave a Mark_ , which takes place pre-canon. You don’t actually have to read that one before reading this one, as the events are (roughly) explained here, but if you want to see what actually happened that day, you can by reading that fic. Additionally, Jounouchi and Yuugi are Japanese, and as such they don’t use Fahrenheit like we Americans do. When they mention the temperature, they’re talking Celsius, so I converted accordingly. Lastly, Ishimoto Naoya is the boyfriend of one of Yuugi’s university friends (and is therefore tangentially friends with Yuugi, and even more tangentially friends with Jounouchi). He doesn’t actually make an appearance in this fic, but in case you were wondering who the mentioned “Ishimoto” is, that’s him.

Jounouchi hadn’t paid the little scar any mind in years.

He supposed part of it had to do with time creating an illusion of distance; the older he got, the farther away that autumn afternoon in the warehouse seemed, and the easier it was to simply not think about youthful days of gang activity and pointless fighting. He was happy now, happier than he had ever been in his life, and so there was no reason to dwell on the myriad of marks that peppered his body, much less one that served as such an acidic reminder of the person he once was, and the company he once kept. But whether it was because Hirutani had made a sudden reappearance in his life via contacting Yuugi, or whether it was a coincidence, the cigarette burn scar had caught Jounouchi’s eye while he was in the shower that morning. It stood out against the sheen of water and the body wash suds, and while Yuugi took his turn in the shower, Jounouchi sat cross-legged on their bed to examine it.

Despite the years that had passed, the scar was still easily visible on the inside of his right forearm. The perfect circle of puckered skin was a little paler than the rest of his arm, and looked a little shiny when the light caught it. Jounouchi gently ran his index finger over it, frowning at the way his skin warped around the mark. The scar was eleven years old by this point; the pain had long since passed, but whether it was a testament to the potency of the Marlboros Hirutani had liked to smoke or Hirutani’s own determination to leave a mark, the little crater pressed into his skin by the burning end of the cigarette remained.

Jounouchi scowled, and pressed his thumbnail into the scar.

By this point, Jounouchi’s scars didn’t really bother him. He had enough that he didn’t even remember where some of them came from, or at the very least he had to guess at it. But as he examined the cigarette burn scar now, his throat felt clogged. He had trusted Hirutani, and he was punished for that trust several times over. But while other betrayals left no lasting damage despite how they stung in the moment, this one had left a permanent reminder etched into his skin. It wasn’t even in a place that could be easily covered; unless he wore long sleeves, it was there for the entire world to see.

And that, Jounouchi thought, was probably the point. Boredom aside, he was sure Hirutani had relished in the fact that this scar was so visible, so  _obvious._ Jounouchi hadn’t seen or spoken to Hirutani in years, and before the most recent incident he had gone just as long without thinking of him. But there the scar was, still marking him despite his time away. The bitter taste of disgust was even stronger in the back of his throat now, and he tried to swallow it down. The stun gun scars were one thing. They were on him because of Hirutani’s  _orders_ , but Hirutani hadn’t wielded one of the stun guns himself, and he had planned to have Jounouchi killed anyway. This—this was deliberate. Despite Hirutani’s claims to the contrary, there had been no logical reason to burn him except to leave a scar, a permanent brand to show that, whatever might have followed, there was once a time when Hirutani was close enough to Jounouchi to—

“Katsuya?”

Jounouchi’s head snapped up to face the bathroom door, where Yuugi—freshly showered and clothed, and using a towel to muss his hair back into its typical spiky disarray—stood facing him. Jounouchi smiled, big and bright, and placed his palms on the bed behind him so he could lean back and take attention off the arm he’d been examining a moment prior.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

Yuugi’s frown didn’t waver. “Are you okay? You looked upset about something. What were you looking at?”

Jounouchi hesitated, but there was no point in lying to Yuugi. He’d see through it in a second flat, and even if the topic of Jounouchi’s scars always upset him, Jounouchi knew that Yuugi would rather know than not. “Just an old scar,” he said. “It’s no big deal.”

Somehow, this information only served to make Yuugi’s frown look more troubled than before. He crossed the room to hop up onto the bed next to Jounouchi, and tossed the towel onto the comforter behind them. “Can I see it?”

Jounouchi frowned, his lips pressed tightly together, but held out his arm as requested. Yuugi carefully looked over it before he located the right scar, lightly poking it with his finger before he looked up to Jounouchi for confirmation. Jounouchi nodded.

“What’s it from?” Yuugi asked.

Focusing on Yuugi’s face rather than the mark on his arm, Jounouchi said, “A cigarette.”

Yuugi looked up quickly, his eyes wide in alarm, but as Jounouchi looked calmly back, the disbelief in Yuugi’s eyes faded and was replaced by a resigned, unhappy look. He looked back at it, and once again gently ran his thumb over the top of it, as if he was afraid it would still cause Jounouchi pain if he touched it with too much strength.

“Did your dad smoke?” he asked quietly.

“Sometimes,” Jounouchi said, and he looked away, toward the opposite wall. “But it wasn’t from him.”

“Then who?”

Jounouchi didn’t answer, save to glance back at Yuugi for a moment again, but that seemed to be all the answer Yuugi needed. Yuugi looked back down at Jounouchi’s arm, and even as his thumb was still just a feather touch over the scar, the rest of his fingers contracted around Jounouchi’s arm.

“Why?” he asked.

Jounouchi shrugged. “Don’t know, really. He said he was bored. He wanted to see what would happen.”

“Why—he wanted to see what wo—what did he  _think_ —?”

“I don’t know,” Jounouchi said again, and he ran his other hand through his hair. “We were in the warehouse, you know the one. Back then it wasn’t so much a torture joint as it was just a place where we hung out. It was after school, and I fell asleep up on the catwalk. He didn’t, though, and he was bored, so . . .” Jounouchi tossed his hand up in the air before he let it fall back down to the mattress. “That’s what I got for falling asleep, anyway.”

Yuugi said nothing, and when Jounouchi looked back over at him a few seconds later, he saw that Yuugi’s jaw was locked firm, his set in a furious glare directed at the little circle of puckered skin. “Yuugi?”

“I just don’t understand,” Yuugi said quietly, but his voice shook with barely suppressed anger. “I don’t get why—why is he so obsessed with hurting you?” Yuugi finally looked up to meet his eyes, and Jounouchi almost found himself caught off-guard by the vehemence in Yuugi’s stare. “He’s obsessed with  _you_ , yeah, in general, but he keeps  _hurting_ you, over and over again. This, and the stun guns, and that time with the yo-yos—”

Jounouchi couldn’t help but sputter a laugh. “Friggin’ yo-yos,” he said. “Don’t remind me. Of all the stupid—”

“It’s not funny,” Yuugi said, and Jounouchi raised his eyebrows. He thought yo-yos were at least a  _little_ funny in retrospect, but— “I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why  _anyone_  would want to hurt you, let alone as much as he does. If he hated you, that would be one thing, but then he’d want to leave you alone, wouldn’t he? So why—?”

“Who knows?” Jounouchi said, and he made an effort to make his tone light—breezy. He knew, or at least he had theories (and for that matter, he could think of a laundry list of reasons for why people would want to hurt him,  _particularly_ people from his middle school days), but he felt it better to keep them to himself. There was no reason to have it weigh on Yuugi’s shoulders any more than it already did. “Acting like a normal, decent person and doing things normal, decent people do isn’t exactly Hirutani’s strong suit. It’s best to just not even try to unpack that mess he calls a thought process, believe me.”

Yuugi’s expression suggested that he either didn’t buy Jounouchi’s carefree tone and answer, or that it wasn’t good enough even if he did. He looked back down at the cigarette scar, and ran his thumb over it again.

“I hate him,” he said after a moment, and even if he hadn’t said the words his voice was throaty, thick with enough contempt for Jounouchi to believe it. “And if he ever comes near you again, I’ll—”

“Hey.” Jounouchi tapped under Yuugi’s chin with his other hand, to make Yuugi look up at him instead of down at the scar. When their eyes met, Jounouchi smiled. “Don’t worry about it, okay? He’s not gonna do anything, and everything he did before is all in the past. You really don’t have to worry about it.”

The crease in Yuugi’s brow didn’t lessen, and his eyes darted back down to the scar marring Jounouchi’s arm. “Still—”

“Nope. None of that. He’s not a part of our lives and he’s not worth worrying or getting upset over. Never has been, never will be. So cheer up.” Jounouchi leaned over and planted a quick kiss to Yuugi’s furrowed brow before he bounded off the bed, and pulled his arm from Yuugi’s grasp. “We’ve only got an hour before Ishimoto’s art show, right? We don’t need to let Hirutani suck the fun out of pretending to understand the symbolism or whatever behind all the art.”

It took a second, but Jounouchi’s jibe at the supposed complexities behind the art pieces was enough to make Yuugi laugh a little, the faintest traces of a smile quirking the corners of his lips. His eyes were still dark with uncharacteristic loathing, but the laughter broke up a little of the unhappiness otherwise clouding his expression, and that was enough to make Yuugi smile back.

“Yeah. We don’t need to let him ruin our day,” Yuugi said, and he clambered off the bed after Jounouchi, who led the way out of their bedroom. “Want to stop for smoothies on the way there?”

“Sure thing.”

In the cooler months, Jounouchi and Yuugi’s jackets and coats would usually end up slung over the back of chairs or across the cushions of the sofa, a habit that they’d held onto ever since their first apartment. In the warmer months they were a bit better about storing their coats and hoodies in their closet, but each of them still had a light jacket out for rainy days, or days of unexpected chill in the early spring. This made it more than easy for Jounouchi to swipe his jacket off the back of one of the kitchen chairs, even as Yuugi gave him an odd look and asked:

“What are you doing?”

“Uh, getting ready to go?” Jounouchi said, as he shrugged his jacket on. The strange look Yuugi was giving him didn’t waver.

“It’s about twenty-one degrees out. It’s not exactly jacket weather.”

“Yeah, well. You know.” Jounouchi shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. I can deal with it.”

Just as Yuugi had understood who had given Jounouchi the cigarette scar without Jounouchi having to say the name before, it only took a half second for his eyes to alight with understanding before his expression settled, firm. “You don’t have to do that.”

Jounouchi put his hands in his jacket pockets. “Looking at it upsets you,” he said. “So—”

“No it doesn’t. I mean, it does,” Yuugi clarified, when Jounouchi raised his eyebrows, “but hiding it won’t change that.”

He crossed the room without further preamble and lightly tugged the jacket down off Jounouchi’s shoulders. Jounouchi helped a little, shrugging his jacket off, even as he frowned as Yuugi’s eyes once again trailed down to the old cigarette burn on his arm.

“It’s a part of you,” Yuugi said quietly. “I hate that it happened to you, that you had to go through that. But you did, and it’s a part of you now, and you don’t have to hide that.” Yuugi looked back up at him, his expression softening into a little smile of his own. “I love  _you_ , scars and all.”

It was cheesy. It was  _so_ cheesy, probably the cheesiest thing Yuugi could have said right then. But the sincerity in his eyes and voice—and hell, even the fact that he’d said it at all. The fact that he said it, that he  _meant_  it . . . Jounouchi’s throat felt a little clogged again, and after he took his jacket from Yuugi and tossed it over the back of the chair again, he took Yuugi’s hand in his and squeezed it gently.

“C’mon,” he said, talking around the clog in his throat. “Let’s get going. We’ve got smoothies and an art show to get to, right?”

It didn’t even take a second for Yuugi to understand what Jounouchi meant—what he was thinking, even though he didn’t say it. He squeezed Jounouchi’s hand in response, still gentle, even if a little more firm.

“Yeah,” he said, as he returned Jounouchi’s smile. “Let’s go.”


End file.
